Racial slur and ‘Trump 17’ painted on burned home of 6-year-old boy with leukemia

The family of a 6-year-old boy suffering from leukemia said that they found racist graffiti supporting President-elect Donald Trump on their home, which was destroyed by fire in Lake City, Florida on New Year’s Eve.

Army veteran Joanne Perkins explained to WJAX the fire was started when her oldest son left the stove on while no one was home on New Year’s Eve.

When she returned on Monday to try to salvage her belongings, she found a racial slur scrawled across the front of her home. A message reading “Trump 17″ was painted on another wall.

To make matters worse, Perkins’ stepson Ivory has no place to come home to after his recent bone marrow transplant.

“How do I explain that to a 6-year-old whose only wish is he wants to come home?” Perkins told WJAX. “How do I explain that to him?”

“I won’t let the girls come back here because I don’t want them to see,” she added. “This is 2017. It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t understand it.”

The Red Cross agreed to provide a hotel room for Perkins’ family for a week. But she has no place to go after that.

“I’m tired. I am,” she admitted. “But nothing in me is going to allow me to give up.”

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David Edwards has served as an editor at Raw Story since 2006. His work can also be found at Crooks & Liars, and he's also been published at The BRAD BLOG. He came to Raw Story after working as a network manager for the state of North Carolina and as as engineer developing enterprise resource planning software. Follow him on Twitter at @DavidEdwards.